Bon Voyage

I’ll admit it, we’ve been leading a sheltered life. Sure, we’ve ventured out of town a bit. We’ve been to Avignon for a few hours, just time enough to be entranced by the beauty of its sheltered courtyards, and to Nîmes, where one expects to see bulls running in the streets fleeing the surge of torero machismo known locally as la tauromachie. Mostly, though, we’ve been hanging around town, trying to learn how la vie française works here and how we might fit into it.

But today, having pronounced ourselves graduates of those first baby steps, we’re off to see the wizard, driving deep into deepest France. Our goal is to make some new face to face friends with folks we’ve only known up to now via the Internet, that same way many of us know each other. They live in the Tarn et Garonne, specifically in Parisot. There, that’s your homework. Just try to find Parisot on the map.

We’ll drive down to Aubais to drop Beppo off at Le Jardin des Chats, where we hope he’ll make some new friends too. It’s a kitty camp, whose website promises that a cat will experience well-being and feel right at home as it reposes itself tranquilly, without stress. And indeed, when we visited, we were admonished to speak very quietly in front of the reposing cats so as not to cause them any anxieties whatsoever. Four cats bunk together in each nicely furnished room, with their own completely enclosed yard. I hope our friends in Parisot will treat us that well!

We humans will cook and eat and drink together, stay up late meowsing around, and repose ourselves too, I’m sure. Then on the way home we’ll visit the stupendous viaduct at Millau. That’s the plan, anyway, but we don’t promise to stick to it. This is our first stab at running away from home in our slightly-too-big French Volvo, following the slightly-too-small back roads that will open our eyes to a different France. A dimanche. See you on Sunday.